Friday, November 02, 2007

Does this description taken from an article by Martin Paulus in the recent Science issue on decision making remind you of some?

Substance-use disorders. Various deficits in decision-makinghave been reported in people with substance-use disorders (24).Specifically, these individuals do not appropriately take intoaccount outcomes that occur sometime in the future versus thosethat occur now, and they therefore discount delayed rewardsat significantly higher rates than do comparison subjects (25–27).Some have argued that this behavior occurs because of an underlyingdisposition of impulsivity rather than a substance-induced problem(28). This presumes a discounting model of impulsiveness (29)(impulsivity is a direct consequence of an increased attenuationof rewards as a function of delay), which is supported by thefinding that the degree of temporal discounting is correlatedwith ratings of impulsivity (30). Thus, altered discountingmay be a predisposing characteristic but not a consequence ofyears of substance use, because individuals reporting illicitdrug use at a younger age tend to discount the value of futurehypothetical rewards more steeply than do their peers (31).

Individuals with substance-related problems, irrespective ofthe substance used, perform poorly on the Iowa gambling task(IGT) (32–36), which measures the degree to which individualsselect small immediate gains associated with long-term gains(advantageous option) over large immediate gains associatedwith long-term losses (disadvantageous option). These decision-makingproblems occur with and without concomitant working memory orexecutive-functioning problems, suggesting that decision-makingis not simply a result of impairments in executive functioning. . . .

Addicted individuals either show attenuatedlearning of selecting advantageous options or do not choosepreferentially advantageous options over disadvantageous ones.It is not clear which behavioral processes or neural systemsare responsible for this deficit. . . . However, it is not clear whetherthese deficits are related to abnormal orbitofrontal functioning,a consequence of years of fossil fuel use, related to poorer outcomes,or even generalizable to other decision-making situations. . . .

Taken together, thereis substantial evidence for altered behavioral decision-makingin substance-using individuals, irrespective of the behavioralprobe that was used. These dysfunctions include altered processingof future outcomes, reduced ability to adapt to short- versuslong-term gains, selection of suboptimal choices based on probability,and/or reduced ability to incorporate outcomes into alteringthe preference structure of available options. Nevertheless,it is not yet clear whether these dysfunctions are due to primarydifferences in establishing the preference structure of theavailable options or, alternatively, represent an attempt togenerate a preference structure that is optimal for an individualwith an altered homeostasis.

Denial is a common feature of fanatical adherence to all causes. Committed fascists for instance deny the Holocaust; committed Communists denied the purges. Don't talk about the Inquisition.

Nearer to home there are very troubling symptoms in the AGW community. One is refusal to publish or archive data. Another is demonization of opponents. A third is continued defence of the indefensible.

When the ice core (and other) data is archived, when the community finally admits that MBH 98 has been discredited, that Wegman was right, then some of us will start to take it more seriously.

But one can see why they don't. It will be very awkward. As awkward as the existence of the Gulag was.... A lot on the left have not yet come to terms with the implications of that, and its been twenty or thirty years since we have known the truth there.

"when the community finally admits that MBH 98 has been discredited, that Wegman was right, then some of us will start to take it more seriously."

You mean admit that Wegman was right on his key point?

"We do agree with Dr. Mann on one key point: that MBH98/99 were not the only evidence of global warming.As we said in our report, “In a real sense the paleoclimate results of MBH98/99 are essentially irrelevant to the consensus on climate change. The instrumented temperature record since 1850 clearly indicates an increase in temperature.” We certainly agree that modern global warming is real. We have never disputed this point. We think it is time to put the “hockey stick” controversy behind us and move on.”

Yes, I suppose Wegman was right on that key point ... and I can sure see how failing to make data available to every Tom Dick and Steve who asks for it is equivalent to Stalin's sending people to prison camps in the Gulag.

This is an interesting topic. One example that comes to mind is backing up your hard drive. It seems like such a big pain with little reward, until your hard drive crashes.

Another good example is using source control software. Properly used, source control can aid in reproducing a bug in one day versus one week. Without good source control, it is sometimes impossible to reproduce a bug reported in the field.

Some common excuses for not using source control are "it's too time consuming", "it's too expensive", or "that's not how we do things."

The above example could also apply to archiving of other types of data, such as temperature measurements, etc.

Eli, the problem is many people see through the issue of "long term gain." heating is in the pipeline. It can't be stopped according to AGW. It can be arrested, in the DECADES to come.For an aging population worrying about the "long term" you get to enjoy is folly. And don't tell me to do it for the children.

In general, we found MBH98 and MBH99 to be somewhat obscure and incomplete and the criticisms of MM03/05a/05b to be valid and compelling.

While the work of Michael Mann and colleagues presents what appears to be compelling evidence of global temperature change, the criticisms of McIntyre and McKitrick, as well as those of other authors mentioned are indeed valid.

The centering of the proxy series is a critical factor in using principal components methodology properly. It is not clear that Dr. Mann and his associates even realized that their methodology was faulty at the time of writing the MBH paper. The net effect of the decentering is to preferentially choose the so-called hockey stick shapes.

One of the most compelling illustrations that McIntyre and McKitrick have produced is created by feeding red noise [AR(1) with parameter = 0.2] into the MBH algorithm. The AR(1) process is a stationary process meaning that it should not exhibit any long-term trend. The MBH98 algorithm found ‘hockey stick’ trend in each of the independent replications.

In our further exploration of the social network of authorships in temperature reconstruction, we found that at least 43 authors have direct ties to Dr. Mann by virtue of coauthored papers with him. Our findings from this analysis suggest that authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus ‘independent studies’ may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface....

It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community. Additionally, we judge that the sharing of research materials, data and results was haphazardly and grudgingly done.

Let me see, this is the Wegman who believed that CO2 stratified in the atmosphere by mass, and he worries about the paleo guys not interacting with the climate community? Wegman, in fact had no clue about how statisticians were working in climate science.

Is it really so very hard to just admit it? What I and many others see here is denialism. That is, thrashing around in the effort to not admit that MBH98 was just plain wrong.

Never mind, is it relevant, have we moved on, is there other evidence. Maybe, maybe.

Are you going to admit that it was wrong? I think not. Can't recall meeting a committed Communist either who would admit that Conquest had been right. Never mind that things had moved on. Conquest was right.

Wegman was right. MBH98 is discredited. The hockey stick, so widely publicized around the world media, was the product of bad stats applied to worse data. There never was any hockey stick. It was an artifact of the data selection and its treatment.

“If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realize that argument is useless and will therefore result to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called ‘education’.”

And "An Inconvenient Truth" is being shown in schools as part of the "education"...

So Frederic thinks that running a big experiment with the only atmosphere we have is a reasonable course of action. That he wants to continue the experiment when there are some disturbing signs of things going in the ditch would seem to be in agreement with "altered behavioral decisionmaking".

“In a real sense the paleoclimate results of MBH98/99 are essentially irrelevant to the consensus on climate change. The instrumented temperature record since 1850 clearly indicates an increase in temperature.” We certainly agree that modern global warming is real. We have never disputed this point. We think it is time to put the “hockey stick” controversy behind us and move on.”

So, remind me again (ad nauseam, if you please): What's the point in arguing about a 10-year old paper that makes no difference to the basic conclusions about AGW?

Eli: PLEASE: cannot people select "Other" and give a pseudonym of their choice? Is there no way to get the software get rid of anonymous?

This thread has:6 anonymous anonymous

1 anonymous where top says "from Frederick"1 anonymous where top says "Frederick", which is not from Frederick, but to him.

6 anonymous where ID is at bottom: 1 from Sam-Hec 2 from --T 1 from Henry 1 from Not Mickey 1 from Mickey, but addressed to --T,which appears at the top.

At least some are trying, but it would so much nicer if the poster's ID were in the "XXXX said".

All this does is make it harder. Many USENET newsgroups suffered the same fate years ago, which is that the Internet equivalent of Gresham's Law ran over them, i.e., useful contributors mostly went elsewhere, because Life Is Short...

Look, I think the MBH stuff is important because the AGW community still refuses to repudiate it. As long as they refuse to repudiate it, as everyone here has, it goes to the issue of good faith. It is clear that the hockey stick, as presented by Mann etc was a gross misrepresentation of the climate record evidence on which it was based. In addition, some of what it was based on was not climate evidence at all.

It is also clear that it is no longer the central evidence for warming.

If then, as some have said, it is basically irrelevant to the thesis of AGW, why do people still refuse to admit this? It was wrong, and worse, it is not critical.

Why then not just admit that, as Wegman said, MacIntyre & McKittrick's criticisms were right? Why does the IPCC not say of its earlier publications, yes, we relied on MBH98. This paper has been proved wrong, but it was a fruitful paper because it led to the work that refuted it, and that is how science moves on?

It must be to do with what Wegman calls the clique, or MacIntyre calls the Team.

Mann himself has never admitted the errors. Why not?

It reminds one of the Katyn massacre. It was a small thing, a long time ago, nothing turned on it. It would have been possible to say, terrible errors were committed, we are very sorry. But they wouldn't. They spent decades denying it. There turned out to be a reason: admit Katyn, and the dikes might break.

"Look, I think the MBH stuff is important because the AGW community still refuses to repudiate it. As long as they refuse to repudiate it, as everyone here has, it goes to the issue of good faith. It is clear that the hockey stick, as presented by Mann etc was a gross misrepresentation of the climate record evidence on which it was based. In addition, some of what it was based on was not climate evidence at all.

It is also clear that it is no longer the central evidence for warming."

But people still cling to some of its incorrect premises: that there was no MWP or LIA, when other reports prove there was.

Count me in with you. I think a lot more of this should be done. FOr example, I keep trying to get the schools to stop teaching about that blunderer Newton. Even today after he has been proven wrong time after time, some people still quote him and use his work (well, OK, in SOME special circumstances, his stuff may work – but that does not change the fact – FACT I say – that he was wrong).

And in fact, there is no end to the revisions that need to be done. Another example – Gutenberg. People praise his invention and marvel at the work that went into developing an alloy to make type. What I wonder is why he did not just do everything digital. Think of all the trees it would have saved! I have pointed this out several times and have demanded that all honors given to him be removed, but I have not yet received one reply.

So we have a lot of work ahead of us Frederic, but it is a good and worthwhile fight even though the enemy is everywhere. Come to think of it - Eli, what is you view on Newton anyway?

It will shock the young Fredericks of the world that science can be a bit messy. In many ways the contributions of Christy and Spencer and Mann, Bradley and Hughes both illustrate this well. C&S were the first to realize that the MSU could be used for climatological temperature measurements. The probe was not designed for that purpose. Their algorithm had multiple errors which over time were worked out by them and others. A major part of the issues surrounding the MSU TLT product was that the short length of the record (~25 years initially) and natural variation, exaggerated the importance of small errors in the algorithm for the tropospheric record. The much larger/clearer stratospheric cooling (a basic greenhouse increase effect) showed that they were on the right track, and of course, the more than ten additional years in the record have helped also.

MBH were the first to figure out how to combine multiple proxys into a single record. Their algorithm had problems but again, as time has shown, was a useful indicator of past climate and quite close to all of the reconstructions which have been done since then with better statistical methods. You can see this, by looking at the envelope of all of the proxy reconstruction. It is characteristic that corrections have to be made to perfect complicated first analyses. You can also see by looking at the link and comparing it with the original MBH98 that that result was well within the envelope of following results.

As to the bristlecone pines, for some reason Eli expects that Malcolm Hughes knows more about dendrology than McKitrick, kind of like he thought that Peterson and Hanson knew more about the surface station record than McKitrick. But then Eli is just some sort of disapproving rabett

Its truly hilarious this. You just cannot bring yourselves to admit it. The science and statistics are, as they say, settled. Your line is, don't lets talk about the paper. Other studies using different data show the same thing.

So what? Even were this true, we should continue to talk about the validity of MBH. The MBH papers made a huge impact on the AGW issue in the public mind, thanks to the extensive publicity the Hockey Stick received after the IPCC report. They still have not been publicly repudiated. Not here, not on Real Climate, not by the IPCC. Until they are repudiated and the errors acknowledged, AGW has a serious credibility problem. Refusing to come to grips with this is pathological. Its MBH denialism.

Let's quote again what you are refusing to admit. This is from the Wegman reply to Stupak, p9:

_____________ Toreiterate our testimony, the decentering process as used in MBH98 andMBH99 selectively prefers to emphasize the hockey stick shape. This isbecause the decentering increases the apparent variance of hockey sticksand principal component methods attempt to find components with thelargest explainable variance. If the variance is artificially increased bydecentering, then the principal component methods will “data mine” forthose shapes. In other words, the hockey stick shape must be in the data tostart with or the CFR methodology would not pick it up. What we haveshown both analytically and graphically in Figure 4.6 is that using theCFR methodology, just one signal when decentered will overwhelm 69independent noise series. The point is that if all 70 proxies contained thesame temperature signal, then it wouldn’t matter which method one used.But this is very far from the case. Most proxies do not contain the hockey-stick signal. The MBH98 methodology puts undue emphasis on thoseproxies that do exhibit the hockey-stick shape and this is the fundamentalflaw. Indeed, it is not clear that the hockey-stick shape is even atemperature signal because all the confounding variables have not beenremoved._________________________

Now, as to whether the hockey stick is confirmed by other studies, no, that is not the case either. As Wegman remarks on p13:

"The fact that Wahl and Ammann (2006) admit that the results of the MBHmethodology does not coincide with the results of other methods such asborehole methods and atmospheric-ocean general circulation models andthat Wahl and Ammann adjust the MBH methodology to include the PC4bristlecone/foxtail pine effects are significant reasons we believe that theWahl and Amman paper does not convincingly demonstrate the validity ofthe MBH methodology."

There were three aspects to the MBH papers that were critical. One is they uses proxies that are admitted not to be temperature proxies. Two they apply to them statistical methods which are admitted everywhere except here to deliver hockey sticks from trendless data. That is, they are just wrong. Three is, they produce a temperature reconstruction of the last 1,000 years which is not confirmed. There actually was a medieval warm period and there really was a little ice age. Both were global and not regional.

You are in denial. And the thing that makes one think AGW has alarmingly cultish elements is this. It would be possible to accept that AGW is happening, and is a serious problem for humanity, and should be addressed, while repudiating MBH. It is quite possible to think this, while believing that MWP existed. In fact, this is the view I tend to take myself.

But this is not an excuse for refusing to rigorously address, and admit the flaws, in the papers which founded the discipline.

"This [hockey Stick thread] reminds me of the threads that found problems with the GISTEMP algorithm (distinct from the data problems circa 2000). In the end, those problems had no significant effect on the result. Do the MBH98 problems have a larger effect on the result? Does the trend still turn upward in the early 20th century?" -- end John V quote

The answer is no, they have no effect on the result and yes, the trend is still very much there (does no depend on MBH98/99 in the least)-- as the NRC report, Wegman and others have said.

Of course, the Frederics and McIntyres of the world will never believe as much no matter how many times you tell them that because they do not want to believe it -- ie, they are in denial.

In case anyone does not know (or in case they might like to forget), let me remind you that John V is the guy who re-calculated the temp trend for the lower 48 and found the result virtually indistinguishable from that of NASA GISS (ie, that of Hansen et al), much to the chagrin of the regulars at Climate Audit.

The GISSTEMPs were wrong. The amount of the wrongness turned out not to be very significant, though they had rather invited a storm by wrongly putting excessive emphasis on what was the 'warmest year'.

Nonetheless, they correctly admitted their error and corrected the record.

MBH98 is also wrong. The amount of the wrongness is sufficient to blow up the whole thesis of the papers. It is not a minor correction that's needed, the papers were wrong root and branch. They have never admitted it, and never issued a correction. In fact, their acolytes continue to defend them.

So, are you saying that MBH98 was wrong but that after you make the corrections indicated by Wegman, the data on which those papers was allegedly based will still support except for some minor details the interpretation placed on it?

In that case you are in denial.

Or are you saying, MBH98 was wrong, root and branch, but we have since done proper studies which show that they had reached on the basis of bad or no or misrepresented evidence conclusions which have now been also reached by good evidence properly treated, statisically?

In that case you are not in denial, but you have conceded the case for the prosecution. What is left is plea bargaining.

Hey, I am on your side in this. Like I said, Newton was shown to be wrong almost 100 years ago and do you know that my kid’s physics book still has 2 chapters devoted to him -you will be glad to know that I ripped the pages out of the text and sent it back.

I understand they were going to show a film about him but I threatened to take my case to the court. Imagine the field day the courts would have had with that. Error 1 – Einstein showed Newton was wrong almost 100 years ago!

"However, it is not clear whether these deficits are related to abnormal orbitofrontal functioning, a consequence of years of belief in a hockey stick, related to poorer outcomes, or even generalizable to other decision-making situations. . . ."

Since you didn't say WHICH words you changed, I can only assume that this was the original wording...

Yes and Motl showed Einstein was wrong almost two years ago (since Einstein gave us gravitation with no strings attached) -- so that makes Newton doubly wrong (or maybe doubly not even wrong, since String theory is not even wrong)

I was sincerely hoping that at least one of you would admit that the MBH stuff is discredited. But you cannot bring yourselves to do that. You can say all kinds of things, but you cannot admit this.

One of the more absurd remarks is the poster who compares Mann to Newton. MBH is not wrong as Newton is wrong compared to relativity. MBH is wrong like Lysenko was wrong compared to Darwin. We use Newtonian physics every day, we can build buildings using Newtonian calculus. You cannot be a successful gardener using Lysenko's theories, and you cannot do climate history (or any other time series analysis) using the methods of MBH.

Or, if you can, why do we not all use decentered PCA for all kinds of statistical purposes? That after all was the great innovation in MBH98. I'd have thought people studying rate of change in all kinds of processes would have snapped this one up. Disease control to stock markets, such a powerful method of time series analysis must have many applications!

But it seems that MBH is now part of the scriptural canon, and true believers cannot permit themselves any repudiation of it.

As long as you do this, continuing to refuse to accept criticism of publications that, though seminal for the movement, were obviously totally wrong in terms of the science, you make clear to skeptics that you are a cult, not a scientific discipline.

I count myself an environmentalist. We should reduce pollution, oil use, the destruction of the agricultural environment by petroleum based cultivation, the wicked extermination of wildlife. We should stop trying to cover the world with concrete in pursuit of endless suburbia and strip malls filled with junk we do not need. We should return transport to a human scale, and make cities safe for people to walk and cycle rather than design them to be driven through in cars. The steps we would take to have a saner approach to these matters would as it happens reduce CO2 emissions.

I also count myself somewhat to the left of center. We need to bring the troops home and stop bombing small countries, and we need some more sensible provision for affordable health care than either party is ready to consider. We need to address on a national level the pillaging of corporate assets for personal gain by a small elite.

And the MBH papers and the hockey stick it promoted were totally wrong and have been totally discredited.

Frederic: I might have known!!! Let me ask you directly: in regards to his laws of motion - was Newton right or wrong! No talking about special cased, or if you look at it under these conditions - just yes or no! Was Newton right or wrong!

I can't believe that you are trying to deny this simple fact! Can you not see it or are you lying on purpose!

I would continue but my screen seems to have become covered with flecks of spittle making it hard to see (it sometimes gets that way when I go on about my favourite topic).

Dano: I don't think I would lump Lysenko in with the same group of frauds like Newton and Einstein. After all, at the gut level, his work seems valid - no matter what the far left leaning scientists say.

I am disapointed that my daughter's science text book only has 1 page talking about his work, but I printed a bunch of stuff Junkscience and stapled it into her text.

Now, Mr. Dano, I know what you are going to say - if I know so much, why don't I publish. Well, for your information I am well on my way to publishing. The title of my first paper is "If Newton was so right, why don't left leaning scientists fall down?". I will be contacting E&E shortly!

No Eli, you are mistaken, and the evidence is against you on this one. You say "some needed small corrections have been made".

Lets look at what those corrections actually need to be.

First, you'd have to stop using non-centered PCA. As has been pointed out and replicated by NRC, McIntyre and McKittrick and Wegman, the use of non-centered PCA will deliver hockey sticks from red noise. That is, there are none in the data, but you run the data through this algorithm and you get one.

Second, you have to use the R2 statistic on the Medieval period, which, if done, will show that the results for that period are not statistically significant. As Wegman said, in endorsing M&M: "The M&M calculations indicate that these values for the 15th century section of the temperature reconstruction are not significant, thereby refuting the conclusions made by MBH98."

Finally, you'd have to get rid of all the proxies that are either too few in number (namely one, Gaspe) or not proxies for temperature at all (the strip bark bristle cone pines).

When you do that, there is nothing left of the papers. There is no flat line because you cannot go back far enough with statistical validity, and there is no hockey stick going forwards.

These are not small needed corrections. This is wholesale abandonment of the papers. Not necessarily of AGW, but of the papers.

It sometimes happens that believers in a cause do more damage to it than skeptics, and this is a case in point. The most responsible course for environmentalists to take on MBH would be admit that it was wrong, root and branch. This of course is not to Mann's credit as a scientist, but that's just the way it is. Mann should also have admitted it. It would have increased rather than lower his standing. Probably too late now, he's in trouble whichever way he goes.

If you don't do this, you simply give the ultra skeptics a tool for spreading FUD about the whole subject. The problem is that its increasingly being positioned as a credibility test. There have been two Congressional enquiries and reports now. As long as the environmental community persists in denying the validity of their findings on MBH, a pall of doubt spreads over the rest of their message. One does realize it is very difficult. It casts doubt on the IPCC reports which featured the MBH hockey stick so prominently. But, that's life. Better to abandon the indefensible than pollute the rest of the message.

By the way, on Newton. It took 300 years and very sophisticated experiments to make any improvements on Newton. It took a couple years, some basic stats textbooks, and a copy of R, to knock MBH98 out cold. Can you see a slight difference? I don't know about the charge on the electron. Is it really relevant?

Do you think decentered PCA, as used in MBH, is a useful and legitimate statistical technique?

Do you think strip bristle cone pines are temperature proxies?

Do you think R2 is a valid statistic? Is the Wegman quote above true or not?

Whether the arguments are recycled or not does not affect their validity. As elsewhere on this thread, people will do anything, anything, but address the substantial issues. This is because, I suggest, they are in denial about a subject where the science is settled.

Eli, Dano – Thank you for your welcome. I am honored! However I wonder where you were when I needed the help tearing the chapters out of the science books at my daughter’s school. Do you know how many texts mention Newton. I doubt I got 1/10 of the way through before the police showed up and I was given an escort from the building!

Frederic: Again, I am disappointed by your stand. Wrong is Wrong. Again without any of this “in some cases” or “he was right for 300 years so he is good enough” – was Newton right or wrong???

You are trying to fall back on that old liberal trick of saying that science is actually shades of gray. Ha – I tell you – Ha!! Science must be white and black or else how would we tell what is unquestionably right and what is unquestionably wrong. If it is white it goes into the good pile, if it is black it is sent off to CO2 science and ClimateAudit! That is the way science is done!

I finally have understood the joke, and must say it was not very nice of you all.

The problem is, as I now realize courtesy of Tim Lambert on Climate Audit, that the famous Hockey Stick appears in Al Gore's movie. I had thought along with everyone else including McIntyre, that the hockey stick he shows in the movie was some kind of Thompson stick, and that this was why he refers to it as the Thompson thermometer. I wuz wrong.

Its actually the MBH 99 hockey stick.

OK, now we see your problem. Your difficulty is that you know the MBH work is garbage. But the thing stopping you admitting it is Gore's endorsement. So you have been telling me all this time how important it was to move on, while all the time knowing that Gore was still using it, so it was still current. It is still being used as the basis for arguing for public policies.

This is why you kept saying that it was just a ten year old paper, and never let on that actually it was the centerpiece of the Gore movie. If you had admitted that, I would have immediately replied that the reason it was still relevant is, it is in the Gore movie, it is still being used to persuade us of what we should do, and by leading personalities in politics at that.

Of course you knew that.

Well, shame on you all. But you are really in an impossible situation. You can't repudiate it, but you know its garbage, and now you cannot even conceal that it is in the movie, so your motives are apparent.

As for the British Government, distributing copies of this movie to all schoolchildren. Well, one applauds them. It will give those children a wonderful education in how to do junk science. Not quite the lesson the HMG had in mind, but a superbly valuable one in any event.

Goodbye bunnies, this will be my last post on this matter. I really think it would have been nicer of at least one of you to have let on a bit earlier.

Do you think decentered PCA, as used in MBH, is a useful and legitimate statistical technique...Do you think R2 is a valid statistic? Is the Wegman quote above true or not...I suggest, they are in denial about a subject where the science is settled.

I call this 'ants finding a crumb and declaring a picnic'

I wonder why folks think that focusing on a quibble will make the ice freeze back up, the pikas move downhill, the butterflies move south, the greenup occur later, the CO2 not trap heat, the landcover changes not alter the atmosphere, the deforestation not change moisture patterns, the, the, the, the.

Eli: You are indeed a wise rabett! When I tore out the pages from the school texts I was just throwing them in the trash so of course I got caught. I see what you are trying to say and you are correct that if I flush them there will be no way to catch me!

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Eli Rabett

Eli Rabett is a not quite failed professorial techno-bunny, a chair election from retirement, at a wanna be research university that has a lot to be proud of but has swallowed the Kool-Aid. The students are naive but great and the administrators vary day-to-day between homicidal and delusional. His colleagues are smart, but they have a curious inability to see the holes that they dig for themselves. Prof. Rabett is thankful that they occasionally heed his pointing out the implications of the various enthusiasms that rattle around the department and school. Ms. Rabett is thankful that Prof. Rabett occasionally heeds her pointing out that he is nuts.